BAIRDSTRAVEL hopes in 2011 to go to Telemark
Just doing research at present
My friend of mine`s uncle was killed during Operation Freshman .
I hope to join the party travelling to Norway to visit Peter Doigs grave.
PETER DOIG
THE extraordinary courage of a Scottish hero of Telemark has been officially recognised more than 60 years after he died attempting to halt the Nazi’s nuclear weapons programme.
Peter Doig was a humble laboratory technician at Glasgow University who - it has now been revealed - trained as a glider pilot and flew elite troops on a disastrous early mission to destroy the heavy water plant in Norway.
The 25-year-old sergeant was among 40 servicemen who died on the raid, which paved the way for the destruction of the factory and inspired the classic film The Heroes of Telemark.
Doig’s relatives were told simply that he had died on active service in Norway but research by his niece has uncovered the truth, and the pilot’s name has been added to the official role of honour at Glasgow University.
Doig worked in the university’s medical department before signing up in 1940, joining the Cameronians and then moving on for training as a glider pilot.
The attack on Telemark was personally authorised by Winston Churchill amid fears Germany would win the race to build atomic weapons and with it the war. He tasked the newly created Special Operations Executive (SOE) to destroy the plant.
On November 19, 1942, Operation Freshman was launched. Two Horsa gliders carrying 34 army engineer commandos took off from RAF Skitten, Wick, towed by Halifax bombers.
Doig, the second pilot in one of the gliders, must have known he was on something approaching a suicide mission.
Not only did he and his comrades have to survive a 500-mile night crossing of the North Sea, he had to bring the glider down on a tiny, icy landing strip, and then somehow escape German forces and make his way home.
Under cover of night, members of the Norwegian resistance had prepared a small landing space on a plateau near Lake Mosvatn, close to the heavy water factory at Vemork, 60 miles west of Oslo in the Telemark region of Norway.
The plan was for survivors of the mission to link up with resistance fighters and make their way to neutral Sweden from where they would get a boat home.
In the event, atrocious weather hid the landing lights set up by the Norwegians. Even worse, the towing cables froze and then snapped, resulting in both gliders and one of the bombers crashing into hills near the landing site
TRAILER FROM THE FAMOUS FILM
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The Norwegian heavy water sabotage was a series of actions undertaken by Norwegian saboteurs during World War II to prevent the German nuclear energy project from acquiring heavy water (deuterium oxide), which could be used to produce nuclear weapons. In 1934, at Vemork, Norsk Hydro built the first commercial plant capable of producing heavy water as a byproduct of fertilizer production. It had a capacity of 12 tons per year. During World War II, the Allies decided to remove the heavy water supply and destroy the heavy water plant in order to inhibit the Nazi development of nuclear weapons. Raids were aimed at the 60-MW Vemork power station at the Rjukan waterfall in Telemark, Norway.
Prior to the German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940, the Deuxième Bureau (French military intelligence) removed 185 kg of heavy water from the plant in Vemork in then-neutral Norway. The plant's managing director, Aubert, agreed to loan the heavy water to France for the duration of the war. The French transported it secretly to Oslo, to Perth, Scotland, and then to France. The plant remained capable of producing heavy water.[1]
The Allies remained concerned that the occupation forces would use the facility to produce more heavy water for their weapons programme. Between 1940 and 1944 a sequence of sabotage actions, by the Norwegian resistance movement, as well as Allied bombing, ensured the destruction of the plant and the loss of the heavy water produced. These operations—codenamed "Grouse," "Freshman," and "Gunnerside"—finally managed to knock the plant out of production in early 1943.
In Operation Grouse, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed four Norwegian nationals as an advance team in the region of the Hardanger Plateau above the plant. Later in 1942 the unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted by British paratroopers; they were to rendezvous with the Norwegians of Operation Grouse and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the military gliders crashed short of their destination, as did one of the tugs, a Halifax bomber. The other Halifax returned to base, but all the other participants were killed in the crashes or captured, interrogated, and executed by the Gestapo.
In 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in destroying the production facility with a second attempt, Operation Gunnerside. Operation Gunnerside was later dubbed by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II.[2]
These actions were followed by Allied bombing raids. The Germans elected to cease operation and remove the remaining heavy water to Germany. Norwegian resistance forces sank the ferry, SF Hydro, on Lake Tinnsjø, preventing the heavy water from being removed.